Optimal Reactive Power Compensation for Improvement of Steady State Voltage Stability Limit under Stressed System Condition Using BF Algorithm

Abstract

Abstract. Power system operation under stressed condition, can lead to voltage instability problem if subjected to additional load increase or contingency. Suitable amount of reactive power compensation at proper location in the system improves the loadability. This work aims at obtaining optimal size and location of compensation in the 39-bus New England system with the help of Bacteria Foraging and Genetic algorithms. To reduce the computational time the work first, identifies weak candidate buses in the system, and then picks only few of them to take part in the optimization. The objective function is based on a recently proposed voltage stability index which takes into account the local equivalent network, which is a simpler and faster approach than the conventional CPF algorithm. BFA has been found to give better results compared to GA.